Cooper’s Jack Adams win feels surprising considering award’s reputation
One of the best coaches in the game has finally received the one honor he has been passed over for time and time again.
On Wednesday, the NHL announced that the 2025-26 Jack Adams Award was going to Tampa Bay Lightning head coach Jon Cooper. The honor seemed like a long time coming for Cooper, who was named a finalist for the third time. However, given how the award has been voted on in the past, and the names who have won it, it felt as if he was going to be no more than a runner-up once again.
On Thursday’s edition of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Tyler Yaremchuk and Carter Hutton discuss how surprising Cooper taking home the Jack Adams is, given the award’s track record.
Tyler Yaremchuk: It’s a legacy award. … It feels like this year there was just a narrative of like, ‘Wow, can you believe John Cooper’s never won a Jack Adams? Well, the Lightning are kind of surprising this year, so let’s give it to him.’ … Is John Cooper one of the best coaches in the NHL? Yes. Could you make a case that every year that he’s maybe the best coach in the NHL? Sure. But the way this award has been traditionally voted on. It doesn’t just go to who everybody views as the best coach. It’s kind of gone to the team that we think the coach kind of got the most out of what he has.
By that traditional sense, how could you not say that it’s Dan Huse or Lindy Ruff? My problem with this is that the way the awards been voted on for the last kind of 10 years here hasn’t gone this way, so this year for it to just change up…based on how the award traditionally goes, this should have gone to Lindy Ruff or Dan Huse, not to John Cooper…It feels as though from December on, a lot of people are just like, ‘I’m giving it to John Cooper this year because he deserves to get one in his career, and I’ve decided that we’ve decided that this is the year.’
Carter Hutton: I agree. I think that’s what we’re seeing here. I think it is a fact that, like, it’s similar sometimes to like players we see voted in the All-Star games, right? Like, we look at it, the league runs on big names, and at the end of the day, it’s a business, and they’re going to pick what suits them best and what kind of moves the needle. Not to take away from John Cooper, but it did feel like when you look at the body of work and you look at the lineups that they were blessed with, outside of the injuries that went on in Tampa, they were able to find it, but you’re talking about one of the best forwards in the league, in Kucherov, best goalie [Vasilevskiy], and the fact what Muse was able to do, and Ruff was able to do with their group should not be just swept under the rug by any means.
You can watch the full segment and entire episode here…